Page 146 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015
P. 146
something of the language of one place before we die. In memories of our early days here, I find the
beginnings of an understanding of our “iworu,” and in these memories the beginnings of a language
we will spend the rest of our lives learning.
Intimacy
My husband Glynn and I walk our land with a local forester. Glynn carries loppers, I carry a scythe that
belonged to my grandmother; Marcus carries a slide and a clipboard that holds a topographical map.
His pocket holds a GPS. We are placing a conservation easement on our property to prevent
development in perpetuity, and the state of Vermont requires that we submit a management plan in
order to conserve the forest.
On this walk we identify beaked hazelnut, hay- scented fern. I find a clump of maidenhair fern, and
Marcus points out evidence of beech bark disease and spruce rot, the latter an illness that takes
mature spruce trees by hollowing their cores from the roots upward. Nothing to be done about it, he
says. It will be fine to cut the trees where the rot has not spread too much and mill them as lumber for
the house we plan to build. A few years after this walk, we nail white spruce boards milled from those
trees into diagonal sheathing as early snows fall on us. Those trees now surround us daily, keeping us
warm when the winter winds barrel across the meadow.
As we walk our woods in the peak of autumn foliage, the overcast sky has the sheen of pearls which
illumines the sugar maples from within, their reds a contrast to green beech and birch leaves. The
wind picks up as we descend toward the far boundary of our land into a conifer forest. We find fresh
moose scat, and shortly after, flattened, mossy ground where the moose bedded down. In the wet
earth of the vernal pool, black as raven feathers and muck dry, we find evidence of the bear who has
been digging trout lily bulbs.
The moose browses on native buckthorn and maple saplings, the bear digs bulbs and forages wild
